Dear Reader,
Last week, in an open letter published by the Future of Life Institute, Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, and hundreds of other notable individuals from within the tech industry and academia called for a six-month pause on AI development.
They stated the repercussions of not doing so could present "profound risks to society and humanity."
The first paragraph of the letter, quoted below, sets a dark and unambiguous tone:
AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity, as shown by extensive research and acknowledged by top AI labs. As stated in the widely endorsed Asilomar AI Principles, Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources. Unfortunately, this level of planning and management is not happening, even though recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one — not even their creators — can understand, predict, or reliably control.
Within three days of its publication, more than 50,000 other signatures had joined the initial signatories as the story went viral online.
In those three days, I’ve read a number of articles responding to this letter, and among the more popular opinions is that Musk and his cohorts aren’t going nearly far enough.
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This Isn't Skynet… Yet
Not so long ago, opinions like these would have been called alarmist or perhaps even childish — the product of not enough legitimate knowledge and maybe a bit too much science fiction.
Today, however, there are few experts in the field who don’t find the exponential growth in AI capabilities at least somewhat troubling.
Even the CEO of OpenAI, parent company of the now famous ChatGPT, claims to be a bit scared himself.
"We've got to be careful here," he said in an interview with ABC last month. "I think people should be happy that we are a little bit scared of this."
Most people, however, simply don’t know enough about the topic to formulate anything approaching an informed opinion.
Even if you’ve seen and used ChatGPT and marveled at how quickly and coherently it can compose college-level essays, have you truly come to appreciate the power of modern AI?
Let me give you an example you may not be familiar with.
The Big Changes Will Be the Ones You Least Notice
A company operating out of Calgary, Alberta, has invented a technology designed to optimize the performance of electric motors.
In a recent demonstration, it took one of its patented devices and bolted it onto an electric motorcycle — the XP Zero sport bike.
The device, which uses artificial intelligence to very precisely regulate the flow of charge within the electric motor’s inner coil, immediately put the already impressive XP Zero into a whole new performance category.
After the install, the XP Zero showed a 14% increase in top speed, a 20% increase in torque, and a 29% increase in horsepower.
Mind you, this is without any increase in power input from the motorcycle's onboard battery pack, which means the bike's effective range increased right along with the power ratings.
But that’s not all.
Because the coil also produced less resistance and therefore less heat, over time the technology would have increased the motor's service life span as well.
That’s more power, increased range, and increased longevity… Can that even be possible?
Does that even comport with the laws of thermodynamics?
Too Good to Be True? Not Really
The answer, of course, is yes.
The reason this device can squeeze so much power out of an electric motor is that electric motors have plenty of inefficiency-causing imperfections to begin with, so the task of improving one wasn’t anything that modern AI couldn’t tackle.
All in a day's work for modern artificial intelligence, but implications for the electric vehicle industry are fairly monumental.
Maybe Elon’s fear of AI wasn’t quite as global as he wanted you to think.
Maybe he had his own best interests in mind when he signed that open letter.
The point is AI’s potential goes far, far beyond what you read in the mainstream media.
Never mind the cool toys and fancy research tools. As this electric motor optimization technology demonstrates, the power of AI to change our world at ground level is profound.
The Coming AI Boom Will Make Dot-Com Look Like a Blip on the Radar
The company behind it, in case you were wondering, remains largely unknown today, but that’s all going to change very soon, regardless of how many signatures Elon’s open letter pulls in.
Its tech has already found its way into electric bikes and electric boats, and very soon — very likely before the end of this year — it will start to appear in electric cars as well.
For EV makers, the choice will be pretty simple going forward: Either license the technology or fall out of the picture.
It's as basic as that. There’s just no way you can argue with free horsepower and torque.
The company behind it trades both in Canada and in the U.S., and its stock, much like its story, is highly under-appreciated.
It should, by all reasonable measure, be a multibillion-dollar firm at this point, but it trades today at a market cap of a couple hundred million dollars.
For all intents and purposes, it's an unknown.
Like I said, all of that is going to chance in short order.
Learn more about this tech and where it could take the EV sector in the coming years right here.
The video is quick and entertaining, and it’ll get you up to speed on what this company is doing and how companies like Tesla, Toyota, VW, and Mercedes, along with EV startups like Rivian and Lucid, have everything to lose by not working with it.
It’s a remarkable story that will make you wonder why Forbes and Fortune aren’t headlining it.
If you’re interested in learning more, enter here.
Fortune favors the bold, Alex Koyfman His flagship service, Microcap Insider, provides market-beating insights into some of the fastest moving, highest profit-potential companies available for public trading on the U.S. and Canadian exchanges. With more than 5 years of track record to back it up, Microcap Insider is the choice for the growth-minded investor. Alex contributes his thoughts and insights regularly to Energy and Capital. To learn more about Alex, click here.
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